Large, coherent units of information made up of digital content representing electronic books, electronic images, and other presentations are relatively effortless to distribute today using computers, networks, handheld devices, and other electronic technologies. Books distributed using electronic technologies are commonly referred to as electronic books or “eBooks.” More generally, items distributed using electronic technologies are commonly referred to as electronic items.
Typically, electronic items are structured as virtual frames presented on a computing device. In the context of the Internet, content is arranged and delivered as “web pages” created using a markup language such as html (Hypertext Markup Language) that describes the structure of the content on the page, and provides instructions to the browser regarding how to render the content. Html provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects.
One problem today is that digital content may be displayed and read on a variety of different computing devices (e.g., computer monitors, portable digital assistants (PDAs), pocket computers, specialized eBook reader devices, etc.), with an assortment of different display conditions (e.g., screen size and resolution, font type and size, margins, line spacing, etc.). Web pages can be designed with instructions to assist in the rendering of the content on different devices. But, since the display conditions vary widely, html simply attempts to render the content in the best way it can. In some cases, content flows off the bottom of the screen or to the right of the screen. However, scrolling to off-screen content may take an unacceptable amount of time from a user experience perspective for users of a growing number of devices employing displays atypical of general computing displays, such as electronic paper display technology. An electronic paper display is a display that has a high resolution (generally 150 dpi or better) and is bi-stable, meaning that it is capable of holding text or other rendered images even when very little or no power is supplied to the display. One shortcoming of such displays is a comparatively slow refresh rate.
Additionally, less content is available for these displays, and much of the content available is fixed or static. For example, no matter how many times one reads a book, the content will be the same. Facilitating creating a greater variety of electronic items designed for these displays would be a welcome advancement.
Thus, with the growing number of devices employing less typical displays, and because conventional digital content for these devices is static, third party vendors and consumers desire the ability to publish and/or create their own content for various of these devices. Accordingly, there remains a need to improve the way dynamic digital content is delivered to and rendered on devices with different display characteristics.